Edlington two have not got off lightly

It was an hour after the judge had passed sentence on the two Edlington boys that I overheard, on a bus, the inevitable slice of public reaction. "Can you believe it, they only got five years?" I briefly considered leaning over and correcting him. "No, they didn't, they were given an indeterminate sentence. They can't be released before the five years is up, but are likely to spend much longer than that in custody."

My intervention would have been a waste of time. Many of the media reports followed the perception of the man on the bus. They mentioned that five years was a minimum, but left the impression, with varying degrees of subtlety, that the boys could well be released at around the earliest possible date.

The problem with such indeterminate sentences, coupled with a minimum term, is that it is the minimum figure that sticks in people's minds and makes them dissatisfied, both with the apparent leniency of the punishment and, by extension, the softness of the judiciary. Yet the judge pointed out that, had he passed a fixed sentence, it would have been 10 years, but the children would have been out in five. This way, they stay in longer.

The life sentence on Frances Inglis for killing her son Tom raised the same issue, with a different slant. The judge decided on a minimum term of nine years in prison, considered by many to be excessively punitive. Much of the debate has focused on the unsatisfactory nature of the mandatory life sentence for murder.

The arguments against it are compelling, but for several decades successive governments have rejected proposals for reform. I do not intend repeating the arguments, but only to point out that Mrs Inglis would not necessarily have been helped by the absence of a mandatory life sentence.

The judge clearly felt that she had committed a serious crime, notwithstanding its appearance as a mercy killing, and deserved a stiff sentence. Other judges might have been more lenient, even under the present system, and laid down a lower minimum term. I predict that the appeal court will do so.

I was relieved by one aspect of the Edlington case: Mr Justice Keith did not allow the boys' names to be disclosed. For many years I have tried to discover, and understand, quite why Mr Justice Morland, the judge in the trial of James Bulger's killers, ruled that their identities should be revealed. Just who benefited? No one. But many ­suffered, not least the families of the two boys, forever branded, their lives made a misery.

The boys were given new identities, at taxpayers' expense; the revelations of their original names hardly affected them. I cannot see the Edlington Two being released – whenever it is – still bearing their current names; so what's the point of revealing them now? The argument that children will be deterred from carrying out gross acts of violence by the threat that their names would be made known is absurd, as is the suggestion that the public would somehow be better protected if they knew the boys' true identities.

When deciding that James Bulger's killers should lose their anonymity, Morland spoke vaguely of the public interest and the "need for informed debate". Nearly 20 years later, I still don't get it.